Walking on the Land

In Walking on the Land, a third chronicle of the embattled, exiled Ihalmiut people of the Arctic, Farley Mowat (Never Cry Wolf) aims ""to help ensure that man's inhumane acts are not expunged from memory, thereby easing the way for repetitions of such horrors."" After reading Mowat's The Desperate People, an Ihalmiut woman raised after the 1957 removal of her people from their home sought him out for further information, resulting in this account of the Ihalmiut's tragic plight. His earlier reports of Ihalmiut culture and the ""unwitting genocide"" waged on them by government, commerce and missionaries were received with accusations of falsity, denials that the Ihalmiut existed or dismissive silence. Mowat's typically lively, sensitive, plainspoken book traces responsible and victimized parties through devastating misunderstanding and mistreatment.